Thursday, December 13, 2007

Today I studied two topics... 'why humans are wired to deceive both themselves and others' and 'baby social behaviors.' When I stumbled on to this new baby study it made me happy, so that's what we're going with today. (I also studied the theory that all emotions boil down to happy/sad/scared/mad and I'm trying to apply it to daily life to help get to the heart of things and cut through the noise.)

So, babies are like totally smart… it’s a survival thing. (Also, I read an article on cooperation that states that humans and apes have 'happy' hormone releases from cooperating and helping others, but I can't find it again. If anyone has read it, link it to me please.)

Six- and 10-month-old babies are much more capable judges of character than previously thought. Not only can infants pick out a Good Samaritan, they tend to identify with them, according to a Yale University study published in the journal Nature.

The study released last month presented babies with a diorama-like display of an anthropomorphic circle struggling to make it up a hill. Just when it appeared that all hope was lost, a heroic triangle appeared, and pushed the circle to the top. The round climber bounces, clearly elated to have reached the summit. The same scenario is played out again, only this time a square appears at the top of the hill and pushes the circle to the bottom.

The babies were then asked to pick a toy – the helper or the hinderer, as scientists called them. One hundred percent of 6-month-olds and 87.5 percent of 10-month-olds chose the helper. The results were consistent even when the triangle and the square swapped places as good guy and bad guy. In several other iterations of the experiment, the helper, regardless of shape or color, won out.

"Babies are very competent socially," says Kiley Hamlin, lead author of the study. "They can figure this kind of stuff out without people explicitly teaching what's nice and not nice and who's nice and who's not nice."

In another component of the study, researchers showed the circle choosing to sit with the helper or the hinderer. In this instance they found that 10-month-old babies were far more adept at noticing something seemed strange when the circle decided to sit with the hinderer. (They figured this out by how long the baby watched the helper or hinderer pair up with the circle, working under the assumption that babies, like adults, study something that appears out of the ordinary.)

While other research has shown that babies make assessments about people based on their physical appearance – they gravitate toward attractive people – these new findings show more complex levels of judgment.

"In any species that needs to cooperate as much as humans do … we always need to know who might be a good cooperator and who might not," says Ms. Hamlin.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

"Look at those women. Those stupid cows, those slaves! They love, honor and obey authority. They endow authority with the primordial power of sex. Thanks to them, this inhuman, this beastial force can be made to seem humane. With their blind allegiance, their irrationality, women espouse every ideological delusion on earth."

I'm in the middle of a film, WR: Mysteries of the Organism. This is my favorite scene so far and my favorite quote from the film. Its a somewhat documentary of Wilhelm Reich... see below for a link to him.

Sunday, December 9, 2007

When I was a child one of my fantasies was to move to nyc, marry Mikhail Baryshnikov and be tutored by Twyla Tharp and Diane Von Furstenberg on moving gracefully from girlhood to ladyhood to womanhood all the while being incredibly sexy and smart.

I still desire to transition from one frame of my life to the next with grace and elegance. I still look to strong older women for guidance and inspiration.

Thursday, December 6, 2007

A blog has caught my interest. I've read it with fervor... I'm a bit addicted even and try to only read one story per day. It is hard. The stories are compelling and only 299 words long. I submit to you, Very Short Novels. It is not unlike organizing a small space; only the essentials, but with style and aesthetic.